


To Battle the Cold

by Sevent



Category: The Witcher (TV), Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Fluff and Smut, Gentleness, Hand Jobs, Just Softcore, Light Angst, M/M, Snowed In, Softcore Porn, That's The Best Tag For This, The Smut Is An Aftertaste To Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-20
Updated: 2020-04-20
Packaged: 2021-03-01 20:14:11
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,945
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23742865
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sevent/pseuds/Sevent
Summary: Nearing winter, Geralt and Jaskier get trapped in a snowstorm. They'll survive, but not before exchanging quiet words under many blankets and furs.
Relationships: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia & Jaskier | Dandelion, Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion
Comments: 81
Kudos: 1241
Collections: Dandelion, these bitches gay! good for them!!





	To Battle the Cold

**Author's Note:**

> This is probably the softest smut I've written, ever.

It is strange to be traveling with the witcher during the winter months. Geralt had explained to him one spring, some years into their acquaintance, that witchers wintered in their school keeps. For months, they hide away in the most isolated corners of the world, gathered around their stove fires to trade food and stories. Once the snow thaws, they descend their mountains and return to the Path, to another year hunting monsters and collecting coin from contracts. It explains why Jaskier only hears of his exploits in the summer months, though he still finds a way to run into the reclusive White Wolf, no matter where in the Continent they are. 

But this year winter came early, and with it, some complications.

At first, things were looking good. Geralt took a contract on a basilisk in the outskirts of a Kaedweni town, ready for a long chase. As they both found out—both because Jaskier so happily chaperoned him out of town—the basilisk was a juvenile, and no trouble to slay for decent pay. The walk into and out of its den was more troublesome, really. Especially through frosted and slippery earth.

It had snowed in the morning. The seasons were changing. They came prepared for the monster and the cold. Neither of them expected a storm.

Kaedwen’s snows are hard and sudden, as Geralt so helpfully informed him trudging their way back through heavy snowfall. They should part ways soon, is what Jaskier understands, watching the snowflakes drift down into thick clumps with ever-growing frequency. Winter is here. And when they reach town again, the witcher will take his horse and go north to his keep, and the bard, with nothing else to do, will trail west for the Novigrad coast. That is _his_ winter keep. His yearly retreat. Home to many of his earthly delights and familiar comforts. 

The snowstorm comes so suddenly, with such force, that sweet parting is far from Jaskier’s mind. 

They are still a ways away from town. 

“Geralt, I can’t see to _my nose.”_

“You’re exaggerating, come on. Just hold on to me. I’ll find shelter.”

He does hold on, for all he can, and they trudge on slowly, shivering despite their layers of winter-ready clothes. If a rock slips off the mountains to crush them, Jaskier might thank the gods for it would mean he will die instantly and not from frostbite, hours under snow.

It would, however, mean Geralt dies with him, and that is not such a pleasing thought. So he forgets the grim fantasy in favor of a strong grip on one solid, leather-coat arm.

A couple of times he stumbles to his knees and there the cold _really_ starts to bite. Every time, Geralt lifts him back up by the elbow. And on every gust of wind he stumbles again. It’s terrible. He can’t feel his feet, though a persistent ache in his thighs tells him they’ve been walking for some time now, through knee-high snow. Maybe for hours. Jaskier can't tell where the sun hangs in the sky.

He clings to Geralt’s arm tightly. There is so much wind and frost and a horrifying sameness everywhere he looks. He has no idea what direction they’re walking in, if they’re even close to town. If they haven’t just been going in circles. 

He stumbles again, his knees giving out. They’re going to die out here buried in ice, and no one will know until spring thaws their bodies.

“You’re not going to die,” the witcher says to him, lifting him up as effortlessly as the first time. “Look.”

Just ahead, a large, dark shadow looms between the pale, shaking trees. He makes out a fence.

Jaskier’s shivers get stronger with anticipation. “Oh, thank the gods, is that a cabin? It better be a cabin with a roaring fire and a family, with—with twin sisters to welcome us—”

“If you have the energy to fantasize, you can shut up and walk faster.”

“Can’t I do both?”

On the doorstep, Jaskier can barely hold on to Geralt’s arm for how hard the wind tries to blow him off his feet and into the bushes. Geralt beats the door three times. No one answers for a minute, a precious minute they both spend slowly freezing. The push to keep moving is what had kept them from complete collapse, and now, bracing still against the doors, Jaskier’s legs cramp up like the devil’s gnawing at his heels.

As the blizzard roars stronger, and no one answers their call, the witcher kicks the door in. The lock breaks. 

They rush inside. 

“Grab that couch there,” Geralt orders to his ringing ears. “Come on. We need to block the snow from coming in.”

Even with the splintered gap, it’s easy enough to barricade the entrance with furniture. Finally, Jaskier breathes a sigh of relief and sits on the barricade couch, taking the room in. The space is well furbished. It _is_ a cabin, and there’s no one home. No fire, no hot meal. And as Jaskier grumbles, rubbing his arms, no fantasy twins either. 

Of course Geralt doesn’t stop to relax just yet. 

“Do you think it’s appropriate to barge into someone else’s home and start a fire?” He throws the question at Geralt’s back as the witcher stacks the available firewood into the fireplace. 

Geralt snorts. His hand makes a stiff sign and the wood bursts with flames. “Seeing as we would have died out there, I don’t think you should mind all that much.”

“Well enough, that’s true.” 

He doesn’t mind at all, actually, but talking helps him think again. After listening to the howling wind for ages, Jaskier admits he’s a little scatterbrained. His heart still pounds inside his chest, so hard that he wonders if Geralt with his clever witcher ears can hear it. 

Calming down takes time. And his joints, stiff as stone, make the task difficult. They could use a good stretch before they lock up from exhaustion. It’s a good idea to grind some warmth back into his bones.

Jaskier walks around the wide expanse of the room as the witcher works, inspecting the many pelts, furs and bearskin rugs thrown about couches and hung upon walls. They look so inviting. And he’s shaking like a leaf. The fire is not going to heat the cabin up in time for him to regain feeling in his coin-making fingers. 

The dusting of snow over and inside his clothes melts steadily into a damp layer. It somehow feels _colder_ than the wind, and his shivering gets worse.

There’s a hand that catches his elbow. Jaskier turns to it naturally, to find Geralt staring at him with a pinched expression. It might be concern. 

“Where are you going? The fire’s this way.”

Ah, definitely concern, Jaskier thinks.

“I was just wondering if we should take these down,” he waves quickly to the animal hides. “To lay in front of the fireplace. I don’t think the cabin owners will appreciate our redecorating, but as you said, they’re not here to complain.”

At Geralt’s nod, they start pulling the furs down, Jaskier at a slower pace. He’s distracted by colorless skin and white hair humid and frosted at the ends. Geralt doesn’t shake but his lips are blue, and the skin of his jaw where Jaskier touches him is icy. 

“Aren’t you freezing?”

“I can manage,” he says after a second, which isn’t a proper answer.

“Oh no no, we’re not doing this self-sacrificing _‘I can manage’_ nonsense that you do.” They’ve done this song and dance before, and it’s not one Jaskier wants to play in the middle of a storm. “Go on. Sit by the fire. Take your clothes off.”

The amused look Geralt levels at him is usually glimpsed between parted skirts, when their shared room in a town inn means he walks in on many of Jaskier’s loving exploits. And because Jaskier recognizes the _look,_ he flusters, pushing the witcher by the chest towards the fireplace.

“I don’t mean like that, you—ass. Just take off everything that’s wet. I’ll bring the furs.”

His order is followed without further resistance. It might be that Geralt doesn’t have the energy to put up more of a fight, which encourages Jaskier to work fast.

Geralt was the one to carry him most of the way through the storm. Without him, he would have surely died. Though the witcher will not expect anything in return, Jaskier _wants_ to help. He wants to do his part in keeping them both safe. The pelts he brings by twos. Some drag on the floor for how long and heavy they are, and that excites him for when they finally get to lie down on their warmed coats. He brings practically everything to be found from around the cabin house to the fireplace. _All_ the pelts. Even the bearskin rug, menacing and awkward as it is.

What he isn’t paying attention to is Geralt, not until he’s done and he can look upon their grand furry nest-bed for the night. 

“Now I think that’s a pretty decent amount, don’t you?”

As he turns with a cheeky smile, he’s greeted by a sight that flattens his face into a blank, if slightly pink, expression. As Geralt is quite generously naked.

“It was all wet,” the witcher mumbles with a hand picking at his mouth. In the firelight, his lips are a darker shade approaching purple. 

“Yes, well—go on and get comfortable. Don’t mind me, I’ll be joining you in a bit.”

Quietly, Jaskier turns around and starts throwing off his woolen coat with as much indifference as possible. It’s hardly the first time they’ve seen each other naked. They’ve shared beds and baths, and innumerable meals. He has seen and touched more of Geralt than possibly anyone in the Continent save prostitutes and a select number of witches. And yet his stomach flips like a landborn fish, for reasons known only to himself. 

He’s carried so much affection for this man, for so long, that it’s hard to remember a time before they colored every one of his waking thoughts, and on some nights, even his dreams. To see Geralt at the end of every winter, whole and revitalized, rightens the world back on its axis.

It overwhelms him sometimes.

The fire crackles bright in the room. The world outside is shadowed behind fogged windows. Once he’s done undressing, Jaskier crouches quickly to where he can spot Geralt’s white head of hair spilling out from the folds of a dark wolf pelt. 

“Do you mind?” He pokes around the many layers, looking for a gap. He wouldn’t be surprised if Geralt was hoarding a few of the warmer, heavier blankets for himself.

What he _didn’t_ expect was for Geralt to part the furs right where he’s laying so very pale on his side, and Jaskier doesn’t give it a second thought because beside the secret longing he carries deep within his heart, there is fondness, and there is worry. 

“Actually, what do you say we move closer to the fireplace first, please?” 

He receives a strange look over one scarred shoulder, but Geralt relents, doing as told with a grunt. Once he’s done scooting, Jaskier moves the furs over and around, making room again. It means Geralt will get the heat of the fireplace first, and Jaskier knows he deserves it once he settles in behind him.

“By the gods, you’re _freezing._ Why don’t you ever say anything? Move, move,” Jaskier spurs, urging him forward just a bit more. 

Geralt quirks a lopsided smile. “You want me to jump in the fire and sleep there?”

“No, you—can’t you feel how cold you are?” 

Jaskier is met with silence. He curls closer, skin to skin everywhere he can, shivering as the witcher seems incapable of doing so himself. One of his hands crawls under a cold armpit, and his body heat leeches outwards to raise Geralt’s. It’s a fine sacrifice. It doesn’t matter that they are fitted in such intimate—and very possibly awkward—quarters. He will not see Geralt blue-lipped and detached from his body’s needs any longer.

There’s three pelts and half a dozen wool blankets smothering them. The ugly bearskin heats up well between them and the fire. Jaskier thinks that might be satisfactory. Inside his arms, Geralt takes long, deep breaths. He can feel how his ribs expand to take in the air. How loud his breaths are in the quiet pocket of their makeshift blankets. 

The storm swells outside. If they’re lucky, it will only last the night, and in the morning they’ll return to the town for their things. Maybe grab a steaming bowl of food while they’re at it. Like soup. Soup sounds incredible. 

Exhaustion finally catches up to him and Jaskier dozes for a while, slowly warming along Geralt’s icy skin. The fire crackles on so he doubts it was a long nap. Shifting to awaken stiff limbs, something catches his attention. 

“Geralt?” he whispers between them. They are so unfathomably close. “What is it? You’re tense.”

Brought to awareness, Geralt tenses even more. “Nothing.”

“It’s not _‘nothing’._ Come now. Is something wrong?”

“You’re hot,” Geralt unhelpfully grunts out. “It’s distracting.”

“I thought the point was to get warm in the first place.” Jaskier scoffs, but nonetheless moves to push off one of the blankets. If Geralt is uncomfortably warm then of course he will make adjustments.

“No, I...” 

But as he squirms back to a comfortable position behind the witcher, sight blocked by white hair, his hands dip around taut muscles a bit lower than before and meet with a distinct and unmistakable stiffness.

“I’m sorry,” Geralt stresses out with ever-growing discomfort in his voice. “It’s—I’ve never shared a bed naked like this. There's usually a...reason. Other than sleep. And you.”

Geralt stops himself right as Jaskier’s heart starts beating frantically against his ribcage. “And me?”

“And you do all these things that my body confuses for...something else.”

It’s such a low confession that Jaskier can barely hear it over the blood rushing into his ears. At once, he is swallowed up by a wave of adoration and anger. Adoration for Geralt who trusts _him_ with something so private. Anger quickly replaces that gentle feeling. It bubbles behind his eyes. To hear it said that way, that his body _confuses_ any drawn-out physical contact for a prelude to sex. How is it that in his prolonged life, no one has ever simply _held_ him in a sweet and chaste embrace, with no expectations or transactions?

But he knows why. Geralt is a witcher. To some—to _most,_ he is nothing more than a tool. A weapon made of flesh and bone, and deserving of no better treatment.

“Alright. No need to apologize. In fact, let’s make this easy. Tit for tat.” Jaskier sighs, a short tremble falling from his nose. “I want you. I would love to do terribly lewd things to you. But we don’t have to. We can just lie here. Haven’t you ever wanted to do that with anyone?”

Briefly, he fears he’s said too much, too soon for the witcher to handle in one night. But when Geralt speaks, it is not with hesitation. It’s a murmur that slips past with a touch of disbelief. “Didn’t ever think about it.”

“There are many things you _‘didn’t ever think about’,_ like how much better a cut heals if you give yourself time to rest. Or how nice it is to _take breaks.”_

Geralt grumbles under his breath but doesn’t fight him. It’s an age old argument between them by now, and not one either of them is happy to have. Firstly because Geralt is as stubborn as witchers come, especially with how to go about his witchering duties. And secondly, Jaskier can’t believe the bare minimum of good, self-indulgent care is such a novel concept for him. 

He blames the world for how quiet and incredulous Geralt sounds whispering, “You want me,” into the fire-lit darkness around them.

“I do.” Jaskier curls around him ever closer. His thighs hug under Geralt’s. It is incredibly hot both inside and outside his skin, and he wants so far _beyond_ want. He _loves._

“For how long?”

“The truth is, I don’t know. Lost the track of time somewhere down the fifth or fiftieth road spent in your company, and before you ask—I didn’t say anything before because you are also my _friend._ You mean more to me than another shag in the hay. And...” 

Gathering his wits again is as complicated as threading a needle with shaky hands. But he needs to say it. He needs for Geralt to understand. 

“...and I don’t need it. I don’t need to touch you with the intent to get off. I’m happy with this." _I'm happy w_ _ith_ _you,_ is what his heart sings, but _that_ is definitely too much.

He is almost glad he cannot see Geralt’s face, tucked into his back the way he is. Whatever hides in those yellow eyes would have stuck the words in his throat. They would have never come out, and he would have to continue living with a Geralt who didn’t understand that to _want_ him didn’t mean to _only_ want him for his body—his worth in swords.

“Jaskier. I," Jaskier listens with a patient ear. "What if I want you to?”

“Do you?”

The silence after the question weighs over him worse than all their furs. All thought freezes to a halt as Geralt slowly moves his legs from touching Jaskier’s—and it rips the warmth from him in an instant. He wants to apologize. They can forget everything. Go back to the ignorance of before. Neither of them need say more.

Except Geralt twists one of his legs so his shin hugs behind Jaskier’s thigh, as if to bring it up, closer—to where he is most vulnerable. 

“Oh,” Jaskier sighs like it’s been punched out of him. Like his heart’s swollen to big for his chest and it’s crushing his lungs from the inside out. Though it is not a terrible feeling. Quite the opposite. It could grow and grow and for this, he would gladly be breathless till the end of his days. 

Geralt doesn’t speak, and Jaskier understands. He would not know what to say either, not as he holds the witcher against his chest. Not as he raises the knee of his uppermost leg to hook on the inside of Geralt’s, spreading him further under the many pelts and furs. 

“Just tell me to stop, love,” Jaskier whispers low to Geralt’s neck as he pets his waist and slowly, tentatively, draws his palm down over to his erection. The skin he caresses prickles like gooseflesh, and he laughs light as air, wanting to kiss his darling witcher. 

But of course nothing is stopping him now, so he does just that. He has to lift his chin at an awkward angle, dig his elbow into sinking fur, and it is perfect.

It’s a careful touch of his hand at first, but already Geralt surges like he’s expecting something hard and rough. Jaskier grips him at the base and shushes into his hair. 

“I’m treating you easy tonight. We can go hard later.”

_“Jaskier.”_

It’s just his name, like Geralt can’t think of anything else to say and—gods, Jaskier wants so much it _aches._

“Just feel me.”

He spends some time just touching him. Heating the skin up with languid, lazy strokes. Even that much is enough to rile Geralt up, his cock so hard Jaskier feels the thick vein under the head pulse when he presses over it with his thumb. 

“Just feel me,” Jaskier says again when hips jerk faster to meet his touch. 

The nails of his other hand drag up over crotch and stomach and Geralt moans a faint whisper, muscles quivering with the thin red lines Jaskier leaves on the skin. It is barely any pressure, and yet Geralt reacts to it like a brutal strike. So sensitive to a gentle hand.

“Has anyone ever taken their time with you? Lavished you with attention?”

“Not—like this,” Geralt pants into the bearskin. 

“A shame, really, I could do this all day. I _would_ do this all night. Would you like me to?”

He treats the thick head with a gentle squeeze that makes Geralt startle, a gasp caught before it turned noisy. An answer never comes, and—if Jaskier is honest, he forgets the question the second it flies out of his mouth. His fingers are busy wrapping into a fist at the head before pulling down, down to the base with tighter grip. A repeat of the motion earns a louder, thicker moan. 

His other hand snakes beneath Geralt’s body to grasp his balls, and if the work he’s done so far is a tentative experience, this takes Geralt completely by surprise by the volume of his pleas. He takes his time feeling them, tugging when he drags his other hand up in the same torturously slow rhythm he’s kept up so far, never growing faster, never losing his pace. His grip does turn insistent, but only as Geralt’s breaths turn into gasps, then into a shuddering, endless burr. 

Geralt arches to the steady pressure, seeking more—more even as he spills over Jaskier’s knuckles with a stifled groan. A searing heat coats his palms. It trickles down his fingers like gold. Licking it up would be a step too far, perhaps, but Jaskier finds his mouth waters at the thought.

The moment is interrupted when Geralt makes to turn and reach around for Jaskier’s prominent erection against his backside. 

Jaskier stops him.

“No, I’m alright, love.”

More than feeding his lewd hunger, he wants for Geralt to lay sated and served and most of all full to the brim with his affection, for him to understand that Jaskier did not plan to seek his own pleasure. Not tonight. He is being honest when he says he is satisfied with giving and wanting nothing in return.

They pause for breath, limbs tangled together like chain-links, and just as capable of separating. Slowly, steadily, they pull the topmost blanket of fur off before they start to really sweat. A giddy feeling threatens to break through Jaskier's lips when Geralt sighs, laying his head down on Jaskier's arm. He might be smiling a little loony, but it's Geralt. Geralt plush and lax and so very warm against his skin.

He does giggle when Geralt eventually throws out a sleepy, “When we get back, we’re going to fuck.”

“When we get back.”

Jaskier sleeps with every inch of him wrapped around his witcher.

In the morning, the storm has passed. The snow is an enormous challenge to shovel though, but they make it to the town before noon for Geralt to earn his pay. They don’t have the time to stay, as the mayor complains about the snow locking him in a friend’s house overnight, and he would so love to go home now that he knows the basilisk is dead. 

They’d put everything back in order before leaving the cabin, but there’s a permanent stain neither of them had the wits to remove. 

The next town over though, they do get to accomplish a good, lovely fuck, as promised. And when they part, the witcher going up to his keep, as the bard heads to the Redanian coast, it is with a promise to meet up again come spring. 

**Author's Note:**

> Pester me [@seventfics](https://seventfics.tumblr.com) (tumblr) or [@the_sevent](https://twitter.com/the_sevent) (twitter)


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